One fat geek's SUCCESSFUL attempt to regenerate into a not-so-fat geek by watching the entirety of Doctor Who while walking on a treadmill

The Magical Mystery Tour is Coming to Take You Away

May 12 2018
The Magical Mystery Tour is Coming to Take You Away

This morning I hit a really cool milestone in my 100-pushups-per-day thing: I did all one hundred push-ups (five sets of twenty, with two minutes between each set) in cadence without breaking. I have never, ever managed that before. One other time I managed all one hundred without my knees touching the ground, but I have always had to pause at some point (or, more likely, several points), but this morning was unique. I just hammered out each set in perfect cadence and in perfect form. How cool is that? I ain't gonna lie, my arms were screaming on those last twenty, but I just powered through it. I am pretty damn proud of myself. If this becomes the norm then I will shift to four sets of twenty five, but I'm sure that's a bit away yet.

As for Doctor Who, I watched the one-and-only Easter special. So let's talk about that.

Planet of the Dead

(TARDIS Data Core recap)

After such a weighty season finale, followed by a big teaser of a Christmas episode, this one was just a fun romp. Sure, ultimately the stakes were the destruction of all life on Earth, but that was just a little motivating drama. Mostly it just felt like a fun little one-off story with no lasting consequence... until the last scene.

In a nutshell, after an opening bit with a cat burgler stealing a golden chalice from a museum, all Mission: Impossible style, the story settles down with CatBurglerChristina jumping on a passing double-decker bus to escape police. One stop later the Doctor boards the same bus and gets all Doctor-y, waving around a cobbled-togheter handheld device and trying to detect rhondium particles. As the bus (which is being chased by multiple police cars, because: cat burgler) enters a tunnel, it suddenly goes through a wormhole and winds up on NotTattooine stranded in the middle of the desert.

From there it is all humanoid fly people, swarms of flying organic/mettalic carniverous stingrays, and the normal amount of running and shouting. Back on Earth, UNIT sets up shop next to the wormhole, which leads to some banter over the telephone between the Doctor and an accentric UNIT scientist named Malcolm. In the end the Doctor uses some WhateverTechnology scavenged from the crashed FlyPeople spaceship in order to turn the wrecked bus into a flying machine very similar to the Knight Bus from Harry Potter. They zoom safely back through the wormhole, a few stingrays get through before Malcolm can shut it down, but they are quickly exterminated by the waiting UNIT troops. CatBurglerChristina is busted by the cops, but subsequently freed by the Doctor and takes off in the flying bus. A happy ending!

Except for the part where one of the bus passengers, who happens to be Slightly Psychic, informs the Doctor that his song is ending, and that in the end "...he will knock four times." That shakes the Doctor more than a little bit, and sets him into a much darker mood that will carry him into the next story and then his big two-part finale.

I liked this episode a lot. It didn't pretend to be anything more than what it was - a fun romp with some mildly-scary monsters and a bit of heroics. Michelle Ryan as Christina de Souza was plenty of fun, and made for a good one-off companion. The stuff with the accentric UNIT scientist was maybe a bit much, but not too terribly so. All in all it made for a nice palate cleanser before plunging into the darkness that lies ahead.

Specifically, it lies ahead tomorrow morning. So I'd best be getting to bed now.

STATS:

Doctor(s): Tenth
Companion(s): Christina de Souza
Episode(s): Planet of the Dead
Steps Walked: 8,574 today, 2,968,644 total
Distance Walked: 4.32 miles today, 1,548.90 miles total
Push-ups Completed: 100 today, 3,614 total
Sit-ups Completed: 0 today, 929 total
Is the Doctor So, So Sorry?: Nope
Weight: 252.98 lbs (five day moving average), net change -54.32 lbs


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